ANC NEC Member Ntuli Demands Ramaphosa’s Removal — Party’s Next Move Unknown

ANC National Executive Committee member Nkosazana Ntuli stood before journalists on Wednesday and fired a direct challenge at President Cyril Ramaphosa, declaring the time had come for the governing party to replace its leader before the country lost further faith in the ruling movement. Ntuli delivered her statement with striking calm, choosing words that left no room for misinterpretation.

She cited what she termed a failure of decisive governance, alleging that Ramaphosa had repeatedly prioritised coalition management over the economic relief ordinary South Africans desperately needed. Ntuli allegedly told associates gathered at the ANC’s Johannesburg offices that the president’s handling of load-shedding negotiations, rising unemployment, and Cabinet instability had eroded the organisation’s credibility among its own membership.

Party spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri confirmed the NEC had received internal correspondence raising leadership concerns but stressed that no formal recall vote appeared on the upcoming agenda. SAPS members deployed outside Luthuli House maintained positions throughout the afternoon as journalists waited for further clarity from the secretary-general’s office.

Ramaphosa secured his second term at the ANC’s Nasrec elective conference in December 2022 after surviving the Phala Phala foreign-currency scandal, a bruising sequence of events that weakened his authority significantly within powerful provincial structures. The Radical Economic Transformation faction, long hostile toward him, has since rebuilt internal networks across KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo branches, adding weight to Ntuli’s public challenge.

One veteran delegate who witnessed the scene described the precise moment Ntuli finished speaking — a full four seconds of complete stillness swept the room before anyone exhaled, a charged pause that veterans of ANC meetings compared to the atmosphere at Polokwane in 2007 when Thabo Mbeki’s grip visibly cracked for the first time.

Ntuli’s declaration now forces every ANC provincial chairperson to choose a side publicly or risk appearing irrelevant as the party lurches toward its mid-term policy review scheduled for later this year. Whether the NEC summons courage to confront the question she raised — or quietly buries her challenge beneath procedural delays — will define whether the movement governs through conviction or through fear of the reckoning it keeps refusing to face.

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